2018. július 13., péntek

Absurd jail sentences for two Hungarians on terrorism charges in Romania

Absurd jail sentences for two Hungarians on terrorism charges in Romania
Romania’s High Court sentenced two Hungarians from Târgu
Secuiesc/Kézdivásárhely to 5 years in jail each on terrorism charges.
István BEKE and Zoltán SZŐCS have been accused of attempting to detonate
homemade, improvised explosives during the 1st of December 2015
celebrations in their hometown, Mikó Imre Minority Rights Legal Aids
Service said.

The official accusations of the prosecution from 2016 stand as follows:
while BEKE was initially accused of attempted attack against the
collectivity (also called “acts of terrorism”) and attempt to violate
the rules pertaining to explosives, SZŐCS was accused of inciting to the
above-mentioned two acts.

On first degree the court changed the legal classification of the two
acts to attempt, and incitement to change the constitutional order,
respectively, sentencing the two Hungarians to 11 months in jail for the
second accusation (which was exactly the amount of time the two have
already spent in jail).
Fina Aristic
BEKE, together with SZŐCS got his jail sentence raised from 11 months to
5 years without any new piece of evidence
Absurdly, the High Court, ruling on a second and last degree has changed
yet again the legal classification of the acts back to the acts of
terrorism.

The Hungarian community stands shocked by these recent
rulings, since it is a known fact that in between the second and first
rulings no new piece of evidence arose and
the High Court still managed to change the official accusations and
increase the sentence to a 5-year jail sentence for each of the two.
Mikó Imre Minority Rights Legal Aids Service is firmly convinced that
trumped-up accusations and politically motivated court decisions will
not lead to the peaceful coexistence of Hungarians and Romanians in the
country, and they ask for the international community to condemn the
partiality of the Romanian justice system.

As we wrote before, the Sixty-Four Counties Youth Movement (HVIM) on
Wednesday organised a demonstration in Budapest to protest against the
Romanian top court’s verdict sentencing two Transylvanian Hungarians to
prison for what it called an attempted bomb attack in Targu Secuiesc
(Kézdivásárhely) in 2015.